Knock on Wood
by LadyLeafling
Summary: Why is it that the only time Stiles went to hug Derek, the older man flew into a freakin' frenzy? Because the universe was an unfair bitch. Yup, that's totally what it was. Contains slash and is completely unbeta'd.


There's nothing quite like the feeling of panic when you think you're about to die. If you can get passed the whole, life flashing before your eyes deal and the part where you barely stop yourself from pissing your pants; you realize that the panic is quite something.

Adrenaline coursing through your system makes you hyper aware of yourself, your surroundings and your attacker. Fear makes you desperate to do whatever's in your power to survive.

Thoughts of friends, family, and living make you dizzy and weak in the knees.

Rage, uncontrollable and fierce, makes you want to start beating the crap out of anything and everything; regardless of its strength or your own.

You feel vulnerable and powerful; trapped and not so. And for all of those who experienced it, it was the most intoxicating feeling ever.

Those people are called daredevils. And while Stiles had no problem with people who took their lives into their own hands and flirted with danger like it was a frisky blonde, sitting at the end of the bar with a huge rack and dark, 'come-hither' eyes; Stiles personally did not like to tempt fate despite the fact that he involuntarily did so all the time.

It wasn't his fault that Derek was so hypersensitive, though. The wolf needed to learn to chill. Plenty—like, LOTS—of people hug their friends. Stiles hugged Scott, Scott hugged his mom, and Allison hugged Lydia. Hell, Jackson hugged Scott once—and it was just as awkward as it sounded. The two of them will probably never live it down, either, what with there being pictures of the affectionate exchange on each of the pack members' mobiles—so, why is it that the only time Stiles went to hug Derek, the older man flew into a freakin' frenzy?

Because the universe was an unfair bitch; yup, that's totally what it was. It's not like Stiles had been reeking of, as Scott would later eloquently state it as: _"a scent so strong, it was almost palpable."_ Not in those exact words, though, because Scott was, admittedly, not the sharpest hound's tooth in the row.

Stiles didn't do anything fancy today. He just showered and groomed himself, as per usual, and then he went over to Derek's ruined-house and met up with everyone for pack-stuff. And, yeah, so everyone (sans Allison) was looking at him like he was a piece of meat—Stiles hardly thought any of it because they always had a hungry, almost manic look about them, whenever Derek called them over for hunting and other exciting wolfy-excursions.

Okay, he probably should have guessed something was up then. But, no, leave to Stiles to be completely ignorant in the face of impending peril.

Spending all day with the pack, he and Allison had figured out really quickly that they couldn't keep pace with three frantic teen-wolves and a determined, brooding alpha.

Panting, Stiles had quit while he was ahead—and by ahead, he meant behind. Far behind. Like a block and a half away from the porch of Derek's house because he was still winded after playing tug-of-war; and gods damn it, there was no way he was going to go hiking in the forest as big as it was.

He was content with being moderately out-of-shape, thank you very much.

As he sat alone, watching Allison's back as the girl ventured deeper and deeper into the semi-thick forestry, Stiles' scrunched his nose up at the musty smell of sweat and _nature _that clung to his skin and clothing.

The scent, to him, was horrific. Stiles' eyes watered as his nostrils were assaulted by it at a constant rate. It was so bad, that the teen ended up retreating back inside the Hale home to wash the stink off in the sink. He was surprised that water actually flowed from the faucet the first time he used the sink. Feeling the cold water on his hands brought him instant relief. With no soap, all he could was rinse himself off but, in his mind, that was all he needed.

Now, the hug-to-end-all-hugs took place right before the pack headed home. Lydia was off somewhere in the house, fixing her makeup, which had started to run due to all the sweating she did.

Allison and Scott were necking on the porch, hands joined and fingers entwined, looking for all the world like the cutest couple ever.

Jackson was lurking by his car; eager to leave for he had been horribly humiliated during the hike by Derek McBroody-pants. Stiles didn't exactly know what was said or done but Scott promised to tell him tomorrow at school. Whatever it was, it must have been bad. Stiles grinned, just thinking about it.

His smirk must have been obvious because as he stuffed his rancid, button-down shirt into his backpack, Stiles looked up and found Derek standing over him—more like looming like a fearsome, irritated willow-tree—watching him with narrowed frighteningly-red Alpha-eyes.

Let's see Crayola try to turn that into a crayon; kids and adults alike would be horrified by the particular shade of red by itself.

Stiles would piss his pants, on the count that he knew that Derek's eyes didn't look like that all the time even though the dark-haired man was always in murderous, **'I-can-break-your-damned-neck-with-a-flick-of-my-wrist' **mode—patents pending.

Holding eye-contact with the Alpha, he zipped his bag up and pulled it onto his shoulder as he stood slowly. Stiles clenched his jaw to keep himself from gulping like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, after he and the titular character had been caught by this week's antagonist.

"What?" He asks with an air of nonchalance that was so forced that it made his voice crack. God, this was just like when he started going through puberty. Only, the wrong words would get him killed, not ridiculed. Wait, no... Derek would never kill him; he was a part of the pack—

"Don't give me that, Stilinski. You've been avoiding training with us this past week." Derek growled menacingly; his voice low and dangerous. The tone promising just as much bodily harm as the intense look in his eyes did. Stiles startled unable to stop himself. "You think I didn't notice? I'm not the others; I don't walk around with my head in a bubble. There's nothing you can do, or stop doing, that I don't take notice of..."

Huh, what, where did this come from? Stiles thinks as his Adderall-addled brain tries not to overheat and explode inside his skull. His cheeks burn in spite of his confusion and he lifted a hand to his face to rub away the heat pooling there. "Dude, I don't know what you're talking about." He says; trying to sound coy and ended up sounding like he was up to no good. His dad always said he was a horrible liar. Now he believed him. Stiles didn't have a reason to lie and yet he was—and, was doing quite the shit job at it.

"Stiles, don't lie to me. You're terrible at it. Tell me why you've been slacking off." Even Derek knew. Or, he just read his thoughts. Stiles didn't know werewolves were telepaths, too. Crap.

Stiles pursed his lips. Suddenly, he felt like a child being scolded by their parent—petulant, put-out, and embarrassed. And he didn't know why—why he felt the way he did, or how Derek was able to elicit such strong emotional responses from him.

Scrunching his face up, the teen decided to avoid the question. "The better question is why you have been so moody this week. Don't get me wrong, you're usually ominous and silently homicidal—you probably have a pile of awards for your broodiness and a separate pile of bodies, too—but this past week; while you've been unnecessarily creeping on me, as if I need to be looked after like a toddler, you've gotten significantly more short-tempered. You're never especially rough with Lydia but you threw her into a freakin' tree, today—that doesn't even compute to me; how you could throw LYDIA into a TREE!? She's Lydia, for crying out loud!"

Pausing for a breath, he dove back into his rant. "Not only that, but you've been breaking into everyone's houses, marking our stuff as yours', like that overly-possessive fat kid at the playground who licks all the other kids' toys and eats their snacks during naptime. I don't know what your deal is, maybe you're on your wolfy-cycle, or something just as bad and just as over my head—but, in case you haven't noticed, I'm hardly the one who's avoiding you; because I'm the only one in the house, right now."

His words were truer than he would've hoped. He was the only person other than Derek, in the house. Lydia seemed to have made her great escape through the back door a little while ago—if the purring of Jackson's car in the background and the bright white beams from his headlights pouring through the tarnished curtains were anything to go by.

Stifles suddenly didn't feel safe anymore and his earlier thoughts of Derek being unwilling to kill him because he was a part of the pack fled along with his voice.

Derek sniffed the air to confirm Stiles observation and growled when he found that the shorter male was correct. He then growled again when he caught an unfamiliar scent in the air. Unexpectedly, he turned his gaze onto Stiles. His crimson eyes shrouded with mystery as his expression shifted from agitated to unreadable. "What's that smell?" He asks, staring at Stiles as if he already knew.

The teen balked before instinctively sniffing his shirt. It smelled faintly of the outdoors and perspiration. However, unlike the shirt he hid away in his bag, it wasn't anything Stiles couldn't stand until he got home and showered.

Though, since Stiles didn't have the smelling sense of a dog or a werewolf, it made sense that he could handle it and Derek couldn't. Feeling his face flush even more, Stiles tightened his grip on the strap of his backpack before offhandedly revealing what said smell was. "That, Derek... that would be sweat." He said matter-of-factly. "Since you've been riding us about hiking and fighting and all that other crap, I haven't got much time to get 'dolled-up' between school and being over here. I swear; I hardly had time to shower in the morning because all these extracurricular-activities have me exhausted. As a matter of fact—"

Derek interrupted him. "You're telling me that… whatever that is, is your natural scent?"

Stiles scrunched his nose up, not liking that he had been cut off. "Yes. I haven't had a chance to put on cologne—let alone deodorant—in a week." He explained, terribly embarrassed because Derek freakin' Hale was about to tell him that he reeked. As if the Alpha smelled like roses and Coco Chanel all the damned time.

Derek nodded slowly, his red eyes flashing back to their regular color as he made a weird whining noise in the back of his throat.

Stiles watched the Alpha warily before he turned to the door. Through the tatters that once resembled curtains, he could see his jeep. The headlights were on and Scott looked seconds away from honking the horn. Walking to the window, Stiles waved for Scott to hold his horses. Turning back to Derek, he shrugged. "If you give us some forewarning before you called us, I wouldn't smell like the great dead, y'know?"

Heading to door, Stiles didn't see or sense Derek advancing on him until he was pulling the door open, only to have it shut abruptly in front of him. A moment later, his back was pressed harshly against it and he had a wild-eyed werewolf invading his personal space, inhaling his scent like a cartoon character sniffed flowers—loudly and obnoxiously; except, it was endearing when Bugs Bunny did it and horrifying when Derek did.

"_Whoa, what the hell!"_

"Shut up." Derek commanded; his eyes bloodshot and lethal. Stiles gulped before flattening himself against the wooden structure behind him the best he could with his backpack still hanging from his shoulders. Derek sniffed him for five minutes. Five minutes that felt like five hundred years each and passed like frozen molasses through an hourglass.

When Derek finally backed away, he moved back only far enough for Stiles to breathe without their chests touching. Meaning, he really didn't move at all. As per usual, he was all up in Stiles' personal space and was completely unrepentant about it. Staring up at the Alpha, Stiles noticed that Derek looked like he was ready to crawl out of his skin.

"…Hn, it is your natural smell." He mused aloud, genuinely astounded. Due to the close-proximity, Stiles was able to rule out Derek being adverse to his scent—on the contrary, he seemed as though he was enjoying it quite a bit.

With that thought in mind, Stiles began to grow increasingly uncomfortable—he was nearly trembling as he came so close to pissing his pants that it was almost inconceivable how he didn't.

"Yeah… I think we established that." Stiles muttered shakily as he put his hands on Derek's shoulders and prepared to push him away. "And, if you suddenly have become addicted to it; I would appreciate it if you told me instead of feeling me up."

"Do you ever stop talking?" Derek groused.

_"_No—yes… uh, what? How can you say that! I haven't said a single thing since you got in my space, like this!_" _

Derek growled before putting his hands on either side of Stiles' head. For a moment, the teen stopped breathing. Their faces were so close—how the hell did this happen? Feeling Derek's breath on his face, Stiles panicked. "Uh… well, thanks for the pep-talk. My dad's expecting me home—in one piece." The teen patted Derek on the shoulder as he ducked under his muscular arms. Stumbling over his own feet, Stiles backed away from the Alpha.

"Then go home, Stiles."

"You're in front of the door."

Derek moved. Stiles took a breath. Carefully, the teen approached the door and grabbed the knob. "Tomorrow, after class, you and Scott need to be here early. But, I give you a half-hour to preen, got it?"

Stiles lost himself for the moment as his mind processed Derek's words. The Alpha was making a concession—_for him_. His mental processors overheated and Stiles short-circuited. As his brain went into hibernation-mode to repair the heat damage, the teen's body was free to move on its own accord. And it seemed to think that it would be a good idea to _hug_ Derek—because, well, he always hugged people he was thankful to.

Without his mind to tell him that that was a bad idea—that sometimes, just looking at the Alpha was a 'no-no'—he went in for the embrace.

With his arms spread as wide as they could go and his face frozen in a temporary state of ignorant enthusiasm, Stiles reached for Derek and gave him a big bear-hug. "Oh, my god—dude, you're a saint when you want to be!" The hug lasted for five seconds before Derek lost his shit.

"Stiles," He growled, his voice at a far lower register than Stiles had ever heard it. It was a daring purr and it made Stiles' skin prickle with Goosebumps as the sound echoed in his ears.

Wow, Derek's voice… it was incredible. Did his voice always sound like that? Stiles' brain was back online and with its reactivation came a gigantic freak-out. His heart hammered in his chest and before he could stop himself, his mouth was moving. "Oh, shit. Derek, I'm sorry—"

Ladies and Gentlemen, his famous last words.

Stiles was on the floor in a flash. His backpack thumped against the door—apparently, Derek had torn it from his shoulders and threw it. Ah, crap. There goes the fifty freakin' dollars he spent on it!

Before Stiles could bolt upright, his chest was being crushed by Derek's massive one. Panic made him scream but Derek's swift moments stopped the sound from ever escaping his mouth. With Derek kissing him, Stiles was thoroughly distracted from the other things that the werewolf began doing—the rather… inappropriate things he did.

It wasn't until his shirt was hiked up his chest and his jeans undone; pulled halfway down his thighs as Derek's large hands palmed at his boxers, making Stiles writhed on the floor—making him come undone under the werewolf's skilled hands—did the teen finally get ahold of himself. "H-hey! Wait—hah, D-Derek, what the hell?!—"

When those red eyes glared at him and those pearly-whites elongated menacingly, Stiles gritted his own teeth before planting his hands firmly on Derek's sturdy chest and shoving as hard as he could.

The Alpha didn't budge but struggling made Stiles feel like he had a fighting chance to prevent whatever _this_ was that was about to happen from happening; not that he didn't want it—he thought about it. Oh, and how could he not; Derek was undeniably attractive. He just didn't want it on the cold, hard floor… while Scott and Allison were waiting for him to take them home… and just because Derek was besotted by his scent.

Don't mock him but he wanted his first time to be romantic—y'know, not on the sooty floorboards of the dilapidated living room that Derek used to run around when he was a child.

Derek's warm hands inside his boxers almost made him re-think that notion. "D-Derek… hn… we can't do this—"

"Why not?"

"B-because my dad's expecting me home."

"No, he's not. You told me his schedule. He's working late tonight; will be all week—you could get home at one-AM and he would be none the wiser."

"One 'o clock in the morning?—dude, it's barely eight, what would I be doing here for five hours?" Stiles' cheeks flushed as he felt the intensity of Derek's leer on his exposed skin. "Oh, don't you look at me like that—it's not humanly possible to screw for five hours!"

"I could turn you, y'know. The offer's still on the table." Derek cooed, right in his ear and Stiles shivered.

"Can't you Hales take no for an answer? I don't want to be turned! I like being human, thank you very much." Stiles pursed his lips. "And I wouldn't turn myself into a werewolf to have crazy sex-marathons!"

"You say that now..." Derek said with a smirk before he sat up momentarily and reached his hand into his pocket. Stiles tried to scramble out from under him then, but the Alpha's powerful thighs kept him where he was. Damn him and his godly physique!

Glaring up at Derek, Stiles noted that the older male had retrieved his phone. "What are you doing? I'm pretty sure taking pictures of what you're about to do to me is considered child pornography—which is _illegal_!"

Derek rolled his eyes as he navigated his mobile with a few careful flicks of his thumb. "Shut up, Stiles." He said distractedly, moments later. The teen bit the inside of his cheek, wondering once again how the hell did it get to this—why the hell this was happening—and why exactly did it take so long to happen, if Derek was so head over heels in love with Stiles' fragrance?

His contemplations were cut off, however, when Derek's phone made itself scarce and the Alpha was pulling his t-shirt over his head. Well-toned pectorals, abdominals and a whole lot of other muscles Stiles didn't know the name of and didn't know existed until now appeared before him; alabaster and firm and just begging to be touched.

Oh, how Stiles' fingers itched to do so but he kept his hands at his sides, planted on the floor—too afraid to touch because he knew once he started, he wouldn't be able to stop.

"What about Allison and Scott?" Stiles sputtered as he watched Derek undo his own jeans with growing alarm.

Derek grabbed Stiles by his hips and rolled the teen onto his hands and knees. Pressing their bodies together, his strong chest felt hot against Stiles' bare back. Even hotter was the way Derek breathed in his ear as he spoke. "I just texted them—told them to take the jeep and go home."

Stiles groaned as he felt Derek's hands wander. "B-but, how will I get home if they have my car—!?"

Stiles felt Derek's wicked grin against his neck. "I'll ride you there." The double-entendre was weak and the innuendo corny as hell; but Stiles didn't really get an opportunity to contest it when Derek stripped him completely.

Okay, so the consequence of hugging Derek wasn't that bad—it just wasn't typical. Eh, who the fuck was he kidding? It was amazing. So much so, that Stiles considered hugging him more often.


End file.
